


Ambition

by inlovewithnight



Category: King Arthur (2004)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-20
Updated: 2006-06-20
Packaged: 2017-10-15 13:19:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/161181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	Ambition

He finds her on the parapet, Arthur's cloak drawn about her shoulders, her eyes fixed on the treeline that he and his brothers in arms have fought and died to keep pushed back from the Wall.

"How do you stand it?" she asks, and he smiles slightly as he moves to stand beside her. He's not surprised that she knew he was watching--enough of the Woads who have tried to kill him over the years have proven female, once he'd killed them instead, for him to know that the women of this land are as warlike as the women of home. Perhaps for that very reason, instinctive heat sparks in him upon finding a woman with steel under her skin.

"How do I stand what?" he asks, following her gaze to the forest smudged dark against the ashy, dull grey sky. "The rain? The incessant fog? The conviction that my feet might rot from under me if I stand still too long? I might well be the one to ask _you_ these things, my lady."

"You are unfair to my land," she says, glancing at him and turning from the parapet. The cloak slips from one of her shoulders, exposing the pale skin and the thin blue strip of fabric that supports the ridiculous Roman dress that was found for her to wear. It suits her both entirely and not at all. "But I meant this." A brief wave of her hand. "Living here, bound in by stone. I'm afraid I will go mad like this. I can hardly breathe."

"The body gets used to it in time," he says, leaning against the stones and smiling at her, the smile that can infuriate even Arthur if he holds it long enough. "I've been here for quite a number of years, remember, my lady."

"You must be a man of greater patience than you seem," she says, turning back to her vigil, and he moves a step closer.

"You will have to find the strength to bear it somehow, Lady Guinevere, if you are to realize your ambitions. Unless I mistake them badly." She glances at him, her eyes wide and her face innocent, but he can see the gleam of the honed edge beneath. They're sparring as well as he's ever done in the salle, and it heats his blood and fires his nerves in just the same way. "Your ambitions-- make Arthur king of this blighted land, bind him here with his honor and his guilt and what you've got between your legs. And take this place as the center of command, perhaps? Drive the Romans out and use what they leave to crush down your people yourself?"

She smiles slowly, baring her teeth by fractions like a cornered creature preparing to fight, and Lancelot returns the expression in kind. "You understand things in pieces, Lancelot. A pity that it is beyond your grasp to see the greater plan, or you might be useful in the service of my ambitions."

"I've had my fill of service," he counters, and leans toward her, close enough to feel the flush of heat rising from her skin. She doesn't retreat, not so much as a hair's breadth, and his blood races faster through his veins. "Perhaps you've had your fill of ambition, as well?"

"Not until they're achieved, little knight," she says, and whatever look crosses his face makes her laugh aloud. It's a bright, sharp sound against the emptiness of the parapet, and it drives him closer still.

"Might ambition not be set aside for a night?" he asks, letting his breath ghost against her skin.

Her smile grows wider, hungry, and if they are still sparring, neither is disarmed. This is no surrender. "For an hour, perhaps."

He steps back and gestures, and she turns, the cloak slipping free of her other shoulder. "Well, then, my lady, follow me."  
***  
He laughs under his breath at her mild anger as they move down the passage under the stable wall, and then along the narrow pathway to the forest. "If we'd known about this," she says, glaring at him and ignoring his offered help as the cloak and the dress tangle and catch and get in her way, "we would have killed you all years ago."

"It hardly matters now." He cedes the battle to her pride and concentrates only on his own footing. "The Romans are leaving. Your war is over."

"There will be another." She knows these forests like her own skin, an advantage that seems to balance out the hindrance of her clothing. "New enemies will rise with the dust the Romans leave behind."

"Poetic, my lady." He leads her farther into the woods, along the twists and bends of the little trail. The part of him that is cold, the part that kills, wonders at her willingness to follow him this way, so far into the darkness. He is only days removed from being the enemy, after all. She either trusts him or is supremely confident of her own defenses. He suspects the latter; he _prefers_ the latter. Things are far more interesting that way.

"Your hour is waning away, Lancelot."

"Patience." He glances back over his shoulder. "We're nearly there."

"I was beginning to think perhaps you only meant for us to walk."

"Were my intentions less than clear?" He steps off the track, slipping between two trees, and gestures for her to follow. "No woman has ever complained of that before."

Before she can reply, they step through another gap in the forest growth and reach their destination. The little clearing is, perhaps, two horse-lengths across at its widest point, closely edged about with trees except for the space they came through, perfectly silent and still and washed with moonlight. There is no reason why this space should be free from trees and undergrowth, and carpeted with grasses; one of the Britons' gods or magicians might have carved it out for the very trysting purposes that Lancelot has placed upon it.

Guinevere walks slowly about the perimeter, and he stands at the center and watches. The look on her face is one of wonder, simple appreciation of beauty, and the smile on her face when she looks back at him again will have been worth the walk even if they do not touch at all.

He still full intends that they shall, though. "Can you breathe more easily here, my lady?" he asks, letting his eyes roam over her body with undisguised admiration and desire. "Away from the walls?"

She laughs softly and lets the cloak fall aside to the ground, then walks toward him with slow and measured steps. "I much prefer air that is free," she says. "Don't you?"

"Freedom is the sweetest taste," he says, and she laughs again, the sound fading away to solemn silence as she gets approaches.

She stops before him and places her hand against his chest, resting over his heart. "And you are a free man, now, Lancelot, are you not? By the letter of the Roman law."

"We are neither of us Roman." It had not occurred to him until she spoke that this would be the first time he lies with a woman as a free man, and it is both infuriating and absolutely right that it would be a woman born of this land he despises.

"Not in the least," she murmurs, and slides her hand up to curve around the back of his neck and bow his head toward her. "Shall I see if you taste of freedom already, Lancelot?"

They each taste deeply of the other in the kiss that follows and lingers, slowly building in heat. Her hand slides down from his neck to the front of his breeches, brushing across the leather in slow, firm strokes. He growls against her mouth and she laughs against his, then releases him and steps away. His protest dies on his lips as her fingers find the ties of the dress and release them one by one until the pale blue cloth falls to the ground. She steps out of it, naked as a spirit of the forest and as unashamed.

"Breathe easier still, Lancelot," she prompts, and he quickly frees himself of shirt and trousers and reaches for her again. The second kiss is impatient, desire growing to discomfort under skin that presses naked against the other, mingling heat and sweat between them. Her hands slide up his back and down again, short-cut nails grazing across his flesh, making him shiver as they cross the bones. He explores her body slowly, his hands tracing over her breasts in deliberate worship before crossing down across her abdomen. He can hardly feel the fine hairs there through his calloused fingertips, but the light touch makes her muscles contract and her skin quiver. She makes an impatient sound, a mixture of growl and grunt and plea that she emphasizes by returning her hand to his cock with demanding strokes. His fingers move lower, finding the soft bed of curls and the slickness of her arousal. She bites down on his lip, impatience growing, and he walks her back to where the cloak lies spread across the grass.

When they reach it she sinks down to her knees and then lies back, finding a comfortable place and stretching her legs out to their length before drawing them up again, bending her knees and parting her thighs to form a cradle for his body. He stands over her and she reaches up, running her nails down his thighs and marking the skin lightly, her eyes hot and her mouth open slightly in a smile of invitation.

He comes down to her, kneeling between her legs and crouching low over her body, supporting himself on one hand while the other moves over her breasts and stomach again, teasing her into a sensitized and dangerous higher agitation, catching her demands and hastened breath with another kiss.

Her hand finds his cock again, fingers tracing along the length and across the head before curving around the shaft and guiding him toward her entrance. He pushes inside slowly, breaking the kiss and burying his face in the curve of her shoulder into her neck and losing himself a moment in the feel of her, hot and wet around him, and the sound she makes, low and heated and triumphant.

He gathers himself and thrusts, his mouth wandering over the skin he can reach, kissing and sucking and biting at it, leaving marks of passion and raw heat behind. She's marked him as well, and continues, her teeth and lips and nails crossing his flesh. She slides one leg up the back of his thighs until it curves around his arse, sliding damp skin over skin and holding him to her until she shudders beneath him, muscles contracting and releasing in pulses just before he buries himself as deep as he can and spends inside her.

They lie tangled together for long moments, tracing lazy patterns across their bodies, soothing the marks they've left. He eases off her and turns into his back, looking up through the gap in the trees at the stars and slowly-rising moon.

"You've taken more than your hour, Lancelot," she says with a lazy smile, sitting up and tugging the remaining pins from her hair. It falls down around her shoulders and she begins to twist it back up again, returning it to the smooth dark coils that their coupling disturbed.

"Is that a complaint, my lady?" he asks, assuming as wounded a look as he can in his state of satiation. She laughs softly and settles the pins, then reaches over to run her hand ghost-light across his chest.

"No, good sir knight," she says, "not in the least." Rising to her feet, she stretches out her arms and walks over to the puddle of blue cloth she abandoned in the grass, and begins to dress again. "But ambition cannot afford too long a rest, even for such pleasant company as yours."

"And how must you serve it tonight?" The moon is nearly high, the night no longer so young; all but the sentries will be taking to bed by the time they return to the fortress.

She smiles faintly, her eyes dark and closed again, once more the huntress stalking prey. "I thought you knew all there was to know of my ambitions, Lancelot. That must include how they're to be served."

It takes a moment for the meaning to coalesce in his mind, for his earlier words to echo back to him and mingle with the cool light in her eyes and the curve of her mouth as she perfects the fall of the dress over her body. He might have been what she wanted tonight, for pleasure and fire and the clash of swords, but Arthur is what she _must_ have, for her people and her plans.

He stands and crosses to his own clothes, dressing quickly and carelessly while she gathers up the cloak and folds it over her arm rather than wrap herself in the remains of their lust. She doesn't have to; traces linger on her skin, on every inch of her, but he knows that Arthur is too polite, too high-minded, too self-consciously civilized to permit himself to see. He will overlook the marks and the scents and the wince that will cross her face as she stretches muscles only recently used, and Guinevere will have him.

By all those measures he has made of Arthur, Lancelot falls far short. He would not overlook, would not be willfully blind to what he does not wish to see, and that, he realizes, is why Guinevere came to him first, and perhaps why she wanted him at all.

"Shall I wait for you?" she asks, and he shakes his head.

"The path is clear, my lady." She nods, steps through the gap in the trees, and is gone. He laces his breeches and permits himself a single shaking breath, glancing around the clearing.

"Ambition is a double-edged blade, Guinevere," he murmurs to the trees. "May your gods grant it doesn't cut your throat. Or mine."  



End file.
